


Smooth is the descent; easy is the way.

by chaparral_crown



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, Dark Will, Dubious Consent, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Possessive Hannibal Lecter, Prophetic Will, Season/Series 01, Slow Burn, Someone Help Will Graham
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-04 03:19:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17890529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaparral_crown/pseuds/chaparral_crown
Summary: For the first time, Hannibal Lecter thinks that not only can good Will see the face of the Chesapeake Ripper, but maybe something further still, and isn't that something remarkable.(The events following Abigail's disappearance are altered, and encephalitis opens up more to Will Graham than Hannibal Lecter planned for. Divergent from the end of season one. )





	1. Chapter 1

\- - - - -

“ **Where are you going? You will bring conflagration back with you. How great the flames are that you are seeking over these waters, you do not know.** ”

\- - - - -

 

1.

 

Beau Graham loves his son like late afternoon sun on the water. He's absolutely bursting with it, when Will feels it that August day. He is 8 years old, small for his age and sporting a bright shiner above his left cheekbone. A boy in the neighborhood called his momma a whore. Will takes offense the way that someone that feels too much does – pound for pound, unhappy until he sees the bloodied nose of Ambrose Davis, running up the lane to tell his pa. Beau gives Will a Bud Light, and tells him it's between the two of them. All of Will's best relationships admire his aggression to some extent, but never understand how far it goes. ( _Years later, you knew better than to start something up with Alana, you stupid child of a man. You can't have truly good things when you are the way that you are._ )

“Ain't nobody's business what th' truth is but ours,” Beau says from between sips of his whiskey, pinching the bridge of Will's nose between his thumb and pointer finger. “Yeh' didn't break nothin', so yeh' fine. Yeh' momma's a cunt, but she's ours ta' holler about.”

“Ah don't like yeh' sayin' it any better than Ambrose,” Will says, quiet and rubbing at his shoulder. He swung hard – his arm is tender with violence. “ Ah miss 'er.”

“Not likin' it don't make it not th' truth. She left us to th' boats. Wasn't good enough for 'er. Wasn't comfort'ble, like that's th' life ah lead when we met. Thought yeh' were too _sensitive_ ,” Beau says with distinction, like a lord over his court. “Thought she's ruined yeh' with her bullshit. Ah' sure as shit din't sign up for no swamp witch when she got laid up. But yeh' a good boy, Will. Quiet, a little too smart for yeh're ol' bastard, but a good boy.”

The temperature is warm, and the cicadas are buzzing at the edge of the boat slip, where both swing their legs out into the muddy waters of the Mississippi. Will feels his father's affection for him like a cloud of mosquitos – he's anxious for it to leave him alone, to live without the scrutiny. Every affectation, every remembered parent-teacher conference and school function a wound. Will has fantasized about catfish snapping his toes off with his feet in the water, taking his leg, swallowing him whole. What a comfort it would be to disappear and be missed like his mother is, like a sore on his daddy's tongue rather than a well-loved yard dog.

( _You love dogs. You think you might love dogs because your dad loved you like a dog. It's better than most people get, you rationalize for him._ )

“Promise me one thing, son,” he says, drinking his cheap whiskey from an old Libbey glass, something chipped on the edge that Will remembers cutting his lip a couple months passed. “Yeh' use the truth the way that keeps yeh' whole. Don't cut at people th' way yer' momma does. It ain't always about bein' right.”

And oh, everything becomes about being right for Will.

( _ **We know the truth of things**_ _, is what they hiss at you, for the first time ever, and then not for a long time after._ )

“Keep those kinds of thoughts shut off,” says Beau, the one time Will bothers to ask about them.

 

\- - - - -

 

Two years with the New Orleans Police Department as an officer. Another two as a detective. Three down without employment following a stabbing; he's the victim, but doesn't complain about his spoiled shoulder. Will knew that the perp's mother was dying of early onset Alzheimer's, and the young man didn't take well to the revelation. ( _Everything is fine until it isn't and it's out in the open, right?_ ) It was undiagnosed. He cites indicators in the home, but doesn't actually know how he knew that. All he saw was rheumy eyes, and the way that her son tenderly reminded her that she should sit down until the officer left the house and he would make her dinner then, and that no, pop would not be joining them tonight.

Will goes to school at George Washington University. He takes in an April of cherry blossoms falling on the D.C. monuments and wonders why he is where he is. He wonders if there's a place for him in a world a year after his own father Beau passes away from cirrhosis of the liver. He wonders if he can help people with his uncanny awareness, his awkward tendency to know things that people try to keep hidden now that no one's alive to be disappointed in his ability to not just keep it to himself. His chorus of knowledge, quietly hissing its truth behind his eyes.

He remembers the heat of his swelling cheek, and the comfort of Ambrose Davis' dripping red nose. He wears glasses and relives the feeling through dozens upon dozens of case files, more grizzly than an 8-year-old Will could ever imagine at the time. He can imagine it now, but quieter. Will Graham is good at making the noise of his mind go away.

Will meets Hannibal Lecter, and marvels how all the wondrous things he knows didn't think to include what terrific horrors that will mean. Will Graham finds Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He goes to his evening off-the-books therapy sessions. He drinks whiskey in the front parlor of the Mount Vernon townhouse, and doesn't suppose that Hannibal would understand what it's like to keep a secret the way he does and doesn't selectively. He gets comfortable – this is a mistake.

Will Graham will think later that he might be more blind than Beau Graham supposed, and that maybe he is just a little bit ruined. He's exceptionally good at ignoring the grave importance of knowledge when it concerns him.

( _ **Now your statues are standing and pouring sweat,** they whisper. **We shiver with dread.**_ )

\- - - - -

The first real seizure Will can ever remember being awake for hits him with the shock of a door opened to a cold night, and there's nothing in him but the electric feeling of his mind disconnecting from his vomiting. Wretching, wretched, he thinks, feeling the pressure from inside. He doesn't remember the last time he ate, so surely there's nothing left. Will half wonders if this time he'll properly vomit up his liver, like good ol' dad. Maybe he'll get lucky and with it will come the liquid shivering feeling inside him with the bile.

( _“Yeh' see that there?” Graham Senior is saying, pointing to Will's adolescent acne with greased hands. “That's jus' meanness working its way out.”_ )

Will laughs. The edges of the kitchen sink are very cold on his fingers, and they feel gritty when he runs the warming tap water over them. ( _What is that redness, what is that dirt? Don't think about it now, it doesn't matter right now._ ) The dry heaves bring tears, and he thinks he might feel a fingernail bend and break at the seam of the counter when he grabs again for it. The shaking is intense enough that he briefly forgets that he was standing, and after gagging again until he _feels_ the white of his eyes, yellow bile sits alone in the drain. Will thinks absently there may be something wrong with him, but when isn't that true?

It's early morning, and he is back from Minnesota. Will thinks on that sentence, restructures it with more uncomfortable truth. He went to Minnesota and he took Abigail with him. He has shambled his way back to Wolf Trap, Virginia like a sea bird coming home. This part clicks with the certainty of pistons in an engine block. There are misfires though, and the time between the Hobbs cabin and arriving home feels empty. Abigail was angry with him, she ran. She doesn't want to face the certainty of Will's conviction that she lured Hobbs' victims. This part feels shaky, but righteous with truth despite the pounding in his head.

Four of the dogs are at his feet, tails wagging slow and tucked close to their bodies. Will feels distressed at their hesitation, and reaches to smooth the fur around Winston's eyes. Harley jealously pushes her head into the back of his hand. It's shivering with sweat, and Will twitches violently when Harley tries to lick the coldness away. The anxious whites of Harley's eyes are the white of a corpse's. He loves them so much, and jealously waits for the dog to push his hand again and give him weight in the room that feels increasingly empty and light.

'Yeh' should call someone,' something that sounds like his father says, working in the craw of a boat's engine. 'Seems like this is a little outside of yeh're exper _tise_.' And this last word is sibilant and drawn out until he feels it in his own throat.

Garrett Jacob Hobbs stares at him from across the kitchen.

Wills head snaps down violently as his stomach cramps. Another gag and violent wrenching of his arms follows. More dark yellow-brown fluid is falling between his mouth and the drain. There might be something in there, trapped between his throat and stomach, but he keeps furiously swallowing anyway. ( _You're going to keep your meanness. It's_ yours _._ )

He calls Alana when he is able to stand for more than a minute without throwing up, washing his hands to clear the rest of the grit from them. The fingers tremble over the call list, but she's one of the first in a very short list. Her name is a little glowing candle in the dark of his home, phone screen blurry but otherwise legible. Will wants to take more aspirin, but his blood feels thin and watery with sleep, and he just sees the label in his head ticking off _do not exceed maximum dosage in a 48 hour period without consulting your physician._

Her voice is watery with sleep too when she picks up on the fourth ring, and his sigh of relief comes out as a sob. “Will?” her voice says, tinny and buzzing. Hobbs watches him from the wall nearest to the stair.

( _ **Do not get sick**_ _, breathes a reckless and wild and consuming part of your mind. You don't know its hissing like you do the other voices. This voice must be yours, or perhaps the fever._ _ **Keep your secrets.**_ )

“I think I need help,” he rasps, digging the words up like coal. They feel heavy and black. They are distastefully desperate. “I can't stop shaking, something's wrong.”

From the speaker of the phone, it sounds as if Alana is sitting up from bed. She's saying something, maybe his name. He tries to reassure her, but the words come out in a breathless jumble. Will's never felt so tongue-tied. He can hear the confusion from miles away. He wants to explain, but she's raising her voice now.

“Will, listen to me. You need to go to the hospital. You shouldn't have checked out of treatment last week.” The pistons of his mind fire again. He had forgotten he had left. The image of Georgia Madchen combing her hair makes him grab for his own curls, the roughness of his beard. It's grounds him for a moment. “Do you want me to pick you up? Do you want me to call Hannibal or Jack and let them know where you are? Where's Abigail, Will?”

“I'll do it, I can call,” he says quickly. “But can you come?” ( _ **It must be her, it must be her.**_ ) “I'll box all of my crazy up for a home visit, just for you,” he breathes and swallows around another pounding wave of sickness. His arms hurt. The admission of his craziness hurts too. “I...don't know where Abigail is.”

This lie is at least partial truth, though it tugs at him from the navel. The full truth is siting somewhere in the back of his mind like a splinter beneath skin.

She concedes, hesitantly, after all Will does in response is huff a little laugh out. She lives closer than Hannibal, and can get to his home faster. ( _This isn't true right now, but neither of you know that yet. Maybe you won't at all._ ) It only makes sense that it's her. Will's trembling gentles a bit as he eases himself onto the couch and away from the sink. The nausea is still raging in his stomach, but a lifetime of binge drinking has steeled him for this kind of discomfort. He's losing so much else of himself that he can't afford a drop more.

“Stay still,” she says from the placid glass screen of the phone, voice fast and soft. “I'll be there as soon as I can. Don't forget to call Hannibal.”

He doesn't want to meet eyes with the dead man in the corner of the room. Sometimes it looks like him, and that makes it worse. He's ignoring the _shiver_ - _scrape_ of antlers along the eaves of his house. Each groan of the gutters on their shredding velvet is violence in his ears.

Will doesn't call Hannibal.

 

\- - - - -

 

Alana calls an ambulance as soon as she arrives. The way she looks at him prone and leaning against the front porch door recalls to mind how he felt looking at Cassie Boyle mounted on a stag's horns. Each prong is in his abdomen, each breath stolen and cold in the morning air.

Will tries to thank her but his eyes keep rolling back and the floor keeps rising up to meet him when he moves away. Fingernails are running little sickle-sharp cuts into the meat of his palms. His handshake would be firm, strong and violent right now, he thinks with a laugh. The only thing that keeps him from voicing it out loud is a distant sense of guilt when her brows furrow.

He doesn't really understand when the EMTs arrive, only that they do. The lights on the van are raucous with red in his windows. His back feels stiff and curved and Alana's whispering somewhere in the background. Will looks for her. She's on the phone, stealing glances at him like there's some sort of betrayal to be hidden. She must be calling Jack. She must be calling Hannibal. Will doesn't know where Abigail is. Maybe they'll refuse to help, or not know how. Maybe this will be just like Georgia.

“Has he been this bad before?” she hisses against the receiver. “He's having a fucking seizure on the floor, and half of what he says is nonsense. I can't believe they allowed him to be discharged.” The person on the other end must say something placating ( _so it's Hannibal, you think_ ), as her mouth goes soft with worry. “Of course I don't hold you wholly responsible, but I'm worried. This isn't just dementia, you have to have seen something.”

A paramedic is taking his blood pressure and shining lights in his eyes.

His throat suddenly closes and his hands shake again, and Will has just enough forethought to slip his tongue out from between his rattling teeth. ' _Don't talk to him, don't talk to him,_ ' Hobbs doesn't say from beside the paramedic, forlorn and damp and wet with decay. Will can hear it anyway. Hobbs' rotting eyes are welling with hate for Alana. He hears it for the first time in years, the hissing. ( _ **He saw it all.**_ )

“He saw it all, he saw it all,” he breathes into the air of the living room, spit between his teeth, wheezing out between the feeling of crushing pain and the desire to go to sleep. His eyes feel like they're melting into the wood grain beneath him, and a latex gloved hand squeaks against his sweaty skin, desperately holding him in place.

Someone near him mentions seizing, and wields a hypodermic sharp into his mouth. The plunger fills his cheek with coldness, and he tastes aluminum. Will, in his mind's eye, swallows mouthful upon mouthful of straight needle-thin black hair until he feels like he's so full of it that his eyes are caught on it. Cassie Boyle's hair. Marissa Schurr's hanging from the wall between tines of horn. The threads catch and pull his eyes closed. It's thankfully dark for a time.

( _ **We have seen the necessity of evil. Get out, get out of our sanctum and drown your spirits in woe.**_ )

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unlike the waiting room, the ICU room assigned to Will is dark and fathomed like a pond, an old florescent fixture above a sarchophagal bed casting Will's skin into shades of grey. Straps line his arms on the bed rail, but Alana flinches when his fingers twitch at either side of him in his unconsciousness, grasping for some grounding. They've left the palms face up. His fingernails are overrun with his own blood from hand wounds. The paramedics had wiped them down with alcohol wipes, but they keep welling up like tiny red eyes. He looks like a poor man's Christ.

\- - - - -

 

The waiting room of the emergency ward in Sibley Memorial Hospital is increasingly becoming a place that Alana dreads being in as the morning progresses. It's the last thirty minutes of every movie with a bad ending. It's all the memories of college she doesn't remember fondly, with hours spent in the psychiatric emergency ward at Johns Hopkins, putting in her study time. It's an old half-full bottle in the back of the cabinet at home she can't finish because it tastes like a different time. She has half a mind to walk right out of the sterile halls and hide somewhere in Little Falls park nearby. She has appointments to cancel. She has different endings she's written for this day.

“Does your boyfriend have epilepsy?” asks a nurse, clipboard firm in her hand. Her eyes are tired. Alana thinks this may be towards the end of her shift. “Ma'am?”

“He's not mine,” she says absently, and shakes her hair. “I mean, he's my friend. He called me to help.”

The nurse's irritation with the vague answer is obvious, but Alana chooses to be gracious.

“He was here not too long ago. Had a severe fever and chose to leave after something ( _upsetting, you think to yourself_ ) happened.” she explains. “They were running some tests and didn't see any brain tumors or obvious signs of damage, but I think he left before they could do anything more useful. He's seeing a psychiatrist, but the fever coming back this intensely makes me think this isn't psychological.”

Alana observes. ( _You are always observing, and forget to participate often._ ) The nurse is in her forties, a willowy African American woman who's hands go pale at the knuckles while she writes with a plastic rollerball pen. The line of her mouth is tight, but her eyes are kind and doe-brown despite the exhaustion. “Mavis” reads a shiny name tag on the breast pocket of her scrubs.

Mavis turns to a computer to her left, typing diligently, all caps so that every word screams out from a spreadsheet. 'GRAHAM, WILLIAM.' Next to emergency contact, a grayed out 'N/A'. Alana chews the corner of a full lip, sighing at Will's name. Everyone sighs at Will's name. It's becoming a swear word.

Mavis hums, like she's tasted something sour. “I see him here, federal insurance plan. Missed a CT and a blood draw at the nurse's station before he left,” says Mavis. Another pause. “Bad temper with the doctors?”

“Probably true,” Alana says with some dryness. Will hates doctors. Will hates being under any sort of lens. Will hates being seen. Being seen is the enemy when people can't scratch his strata any deeper than skin. ( _'But the way I am isn't compatible...' rushes back into your mouth; you said that. You're embarrassed. You're embarrassing._ ) Mavis is scratching away at some notes on her clipboard. Alana wonders how much of it will help, if it's understanding of his entirety is as shallow as everything else in his life.

Unlike the waiting room, the ICU room assigned to Will is dark and fathomed like a pond, an old florescent fixture above a sarchophagal bed casting Will's skin into shades of grey. Straps line his arms on the bed rail, but Alana flinches when his fingers twitch at either side of him in his unconsciousness, grasping for some grounding. They've left the palms face up. His fingernails are overrun with his own blood from hand wounds. The paramedics had wiped them down with alcohol wipes, but they keep welling up like tiny red eyes. He looks like a poor man's Christ.

He looks peaceful for the moment. ( _He looks dead, don't you think? Kind of like that Christ you're thinking of. Your mother would die to hear you say it out loud._ )

“No intubation yet according to Dr. Dierdorff, unless he starts seizing again,” says the resident nurse from behind her, “but maybe soon anyway. Up to the attending this afternoon. Your boy here is complicated. The medication in the drip might make it difficult to get a good clean breath of air – he seemed kind of overpowered by the seizure medication. You said his physician was coming soon, right?”

Alana absentmindedly reaches for Will's hand and gives the prostrate thumb and index finger a squeeze. An unintentional sign of benediction. “His psychiatrist, but he oversees a lot of his health care. He's not into diagnostic internal medicine, but he's a retired trauma surgeon who used to work at Johns Hopkins. He might want to have him transferred there if it's a long-term problem.”

“Any family?” The mouse cursor is over the emergency contact again, temporarily empty and lined with red.

“No,” says Alana. “Just the psychiatrist, his boss, and a few friends here and there.” Another squeeze on Will's thumb. It all sounds uncomfortable and final. She thinks of the seven dogs and wonders what happens to them if this goes badly. They mourn for him when he leaves for a day or two. Sad eyes, low ears, directionless save for each other and the excitement of a person visiting is never quite enough to overcome the absence. Permanence is their language. Every time he has left the house he has died.

Will's eyes roll behind his eyelids. She sits for a long time and counts the lashes around each. She can't just leave. There's no one else to sit with him.

 

\- - - - -

 

He doesn't wake up fully all the morning, drifting between the room and his mind quietly. In this respect, Alana has always found Will to be sad, because it is not all that different from his healthy waking life. Alana thinks Will is unstable. She's told him so herself, never mind any fall out from that.

He does occasionally twist his mouth into breathless words. She can't hear any of them, but maybe they aren't meant for her. His teeth chatter when she asks him to speak up, and he gasps a little at the weight of his own chest. The IV drugs, then.

Relief whispers down her back and into the knot in her stomach when both Jack and Hannibal appear, the beginnings of evening creeping between the slatted blinds of the ICU window. She is cold from the air conditioning and ashamedly bored, sitting in a resin chair that does not speak to comfort so much as a silent plea for everyone to leave the room and keep it sterile. It has been hours.

“Calvary's arrived,” Jack says brusquely, holding a wool coat and a scarf in his arms. The clinical part of him is already turning the figure of Will Graham over in his mind. Alana knows problem solving in the crease of his mouth, and that Jack above all things sees a problem. “Has he woken up at all?”

“So glad to see you could join us,” she bites out, and is instantly regretful. She twists a silver bracelet on her wrist, focuses on the cool pressure on her skin and centers herself. The etching digs in, something floral and twisting. “And no, not in any meaningful way. I tried to ask him where he had been when he called me this morning, and to check into the hospital, but I'd argue he was borderline speaking in tongues when he left Wolf Trap.” Alana stands, shifting to Will's side again. “The RN mentioned they might intubate him if he doesn't come around on his own. He's had a few minor seizures since the last big one, but I was afraid that last one out at his house was going to be the end of it.” She feels dried out thinking on it, and his vacuous stare into the dark of the hallway.

“He doesn't look good, that's for sure,” Jack says, and lays his coat down on the nearby couch. “I thought outside your home after shooting Gideon was the worst he's ever looked, but trust the resident record-setter to one-up himself. I had some questions for him but...” he gestures and huffs his breath out vaguely, sadly, “he's clearly not up for that.”

Hannibal is very quiet when he approaches Will's bedside, recently ungloved fingers reaching for Will's bound wrist, his own umber colored hounds-tooth wool coat caught under the other arm. Alana feels the sting of embarrassment, recalling their phone call between the flashing ambulance lights and her rising sense of dread. ( _“And you never thought to advise him against checking out of the hospital after hearing all that? What kind of mental health care is that?” you're panting, railing against him and urgently taking the dogs in the snow to relieve themselves before following the ambulance. He's patient – you're wrathful and tired. “I thought you were better than this.”_ )

He stares at the nail marks in the palms, brushes over them softly. One of them gleams with drying blood – the skin of Will's palms are frail and bruised. It looks likes he's searching for something, before he finally feels out his pulse.

“I haven't seen evidence of him having major seizures prior to the incident with Gideon,” Hannibal says, measured and careful. “We discussed that it was a possible side effect of mental illness, and when nothing came up in his last in-patient testing, he was despondent but feeling clearer and able to think straighter after a round of anti-inflammatory drugs.” He eyes the two of them briefly, just the tiniest frown creasing his lips downward. He does and he doesn't want to say something. “I dislike being a bearer of ill tidings, but we know he took Abigail out of Fairhaven recently...maybe there's reason to believe something's triggered another episode, and our good Will is coping the only way his mind knows how.”

Jack has the look he often does when something is unappetizing. “You think Will took Abigail and did something regrettable, that he dug too deep into Garrett Jacob Hobbs.”

Hannibal sighs, not quite nodding, but finding Jack's eyes very deliberately. One large hand still holds Will's arm, and uncharacteristically fidgets with the velcro edge of the restraint. Alana suspects that it bothers him that it's there, something not right with the scene. “I think whatever happened has disturbed Will deeply, and triggered whatever was ailing him before he checked out of the hospital again. Whether that is severe mental illness or something external, I couldn't say, only guess.”

“I don't think that sounds like Will,” Alana says firmly. “That's not the man with seven dogs and a self-destructive need to help, a man that felt remorseful for orphaning Abigail. I can't picture him hurting her, even if he was feeling out of control.”

 Hannibal's eyes dart to her, a sienna brown, warm but flat. She often thought he could be cold with people during her residency when annoyed, a little bit alien in a way that birds of prey keep their head still and sharp. She had chalked up to his foreign character; she's just never experienced it for herself. But now he seems calm, if a bit wryly amused, which she doesn't understand and is hurt by. “I do not know many mentally ill people who sound like themselves during manic episodes,” he says, brusque and cutting. “Long periods of completely rational thought, washed away by short periods of psychosis. Really, Alana, we all wish the best for Will, but we can't choose the rose-tinted glasses if we want to help him.”

“More to the point, Dr. Lecter,” Jack cuts in, “I know we had discussed the possibility of mental illness when he was in the hospital before, but did you have any reason to think it would manifest this strongly? Will's mind works differently, but this seems extreme, even for Will.”

Alana feels her frustration like a stone in her throat. “Will is **sick**. For all that he's unstable and that we don't know where Abigail is, people don't have back to back seizures like I saw without a more profound cause. I've been here all day, and things haven't improved. He could have an underlying disease and you're all just writing him off. He had enough presence of mind to know I lived closer to him that either of you, call me, and know something was wrong. He just...he couldn't say it clearly.”

Jack rubs his face, and sighs like a gust through a canyon. “Hannibal, do you know if there anything he's been prescribed that would have side effects like this? I know he pounds aspirin like it's Halloween candy.”

 “He had something come up, but it seemed strange and out of place,” Alana cuts in, wanting to provide something better, something actionable instead of Hannibal's grim diagnosis. She knows more than them, these bold men who think she's soft, and tries not to let it color her voice. “Toxicology report indicated he had ipecac syrup recently. Not a lot, just a bit more than the recommended dosage. He has a lot of dogs, so I could see why he'd keep it on hand at home, but the only other things were the aspirin and the benzodiazepine from the paramedics,” she says with a frown. “The ER doctor thought he might have a sensitivity to it or the EMTs overdid it. The amount seemed really high. They thought about pumping his stomach to figure out what he took the ipecac for, but between the antipyretic, anticonvulsant, and the toxicology report, they wanted for him to stabilize before they tried anything, and once he did there was nothing to suggest he needed it. He hasn't thrown up since before I got to his house.”

“Did you see evidence of anything unusual?” asks Hannibal, surprisingly soft, but Alana knows to be pointedly asked. Suspected suicide? A drug habit? She tilts her head a bit, troubled, trying to recollect her morning dawn. Bedroom in the front of the house, dogs panting and anxious, the smell of vomit in the kitchen, but nothing to be seen. Will was dirty, yes, but he had been delirious by the time she arrived, front door open and chilled to his core. He's lucky to have not damaged himself from the winter cold. No typical bourbon, no case files, no holes in the wall opening up to no trapped animals. ( _Just the one trapped animal, seizing on the floor. Your heart felt pity the same way._ ) Just an empty hallway, a clutching darkness.

“No,” she says.

Hannibal frowns and nods, looking away and into Will's face, thoughtful. Will continues to soundlessly mouth words between heavy breaths, fingers twitching. When Hannibal takes a seat on the opposite side of the room, tenderly checking Will's other hand over for injuries, Alana feels unexpectedly jealous. She can't help it – it's ugly to feel it, even when the resentment of being left alone to contend and witness Will's medical care is fresh.

When he leans back into the chair, laying his coat on the arm of it, Hannibal appears to have decided something, crossing his legs in his characteristic fashion. Alana is somewhat comforted by the familiarity of it. He still looks at Will's hands, like they are a puzzle he hasn't seen before.

“I must thank you Alana for ensuring he was seen to today,” Hannibal says, bringing his eyes up from the bed frame to meet hers. “I knew he was in good hands and wanted to run over my notes from Will's sessions in case I had missed something that would give us a clue what triggered this. I am truly sorry I didn't have any information that would help the paramedics this morning.”

“And now?” asks Jack.

“Not much better, I'm afraid. At least not more than what you and I have previously discussed.” He runs a hand down the front of his waistcoat, and gives Jack another strange pointed glance. Ah yes, the old boys club, she thinks with a twist in her lips. Alana doesn't like being left out, but she doesn't like butting in either. “It may be a waiting game to see how it all turns out. We'll have to be patient for Will to show us something.”

She sighs. Alana wants to be here to let Will know what's happened when he wakes up, but the 4 a.m. wake-up call is sneaking up on her, and there's still so much to do. ( _You've done family care before, and doesn't this feel familiar and sad the same ways as the days before your father passed?_ ) “I need a shower. Would either of you be able to hold down the fort so I can run out to Wolf Trap and make sure the dogs are ok? I think I might take them home with me. I know he has a sitter sometimes, but I don't know how long it will be.”

Hannibal seizes the silence following quickly. “I will stay of course. You should go home and rest. I've canceled my appointments for tomorrow already – it's partially the cause of today's delay,” he says, apologizing with his tone. “I do not think I have much recourse in terms of power of attorney and his treatment, seeing as nothing is on record past his original assessment,” and here he looks at Jack quickly. “But I trust that I still have a little sway with the Johns Hopkins medical professionals. I did a few rotations at Sibley in the past.”

It all sounds good on paper, and judging by yet another carry-case of food he has brought with him, Hannibal expects agreement. He always expects agreement. Alana finds herself envious of his calm in the face of all this. They're potentially making important decisions for Will, and she is petrified of making the wrong ones.

 

\- - - - -

 

The drive back out to Wolf Trap is cold and sad, the puddles in the dirt road leading to the farmhouse covered in thin ice and glinting weakly in the light of her car lights. Every tree is heavy limbed and leaning, and the glow from a lamp in the front room silhouettes Buster and another dog on the back of the bed in the front room.

She knows there's excitement for her arrival, but very little barking and fanfare. They know her from Will every time, no matter how erratic Will's schedule is. When she opens the front door, furred bodies brush against her legs and pant hotly. Things are different, says they're tight tail wagging. Things are wrong. “Hey kids,” she says, touching the tops of their heads with her chilled hands. “Who's ready to going outside? Who's hungry?” Their enthusiasm peaks out, and she laughs when Harley pushes at her knee and runs off the porch with the others close in tow. The mastiff mix has always treated her well.

But not Winston, who is suspicious and the most like his owner. The speckled shepherd dog is slow to rise off of a pillow on the bed, loping along to meet the tips of her fingers with a dry nose. Alana feels vaguely guilty when he gives them a delicate sniff – she can still feel the tacky feeling of hand sanitizer, and wonders if it stings him. Winston favors her with a long glance before looking behind her, and finally going out the front door into the yard.

Tuning on the porch to watch them, she digs her phone out to send off a quick text. _'If only we could have put Winston down as Will's emergency contact. There's no more stoic and faithful a watchman,'_ the words glow from the screen. She watches as from an hour's drive away in Baltimore, Hannibal chooses his reply. For a technology averse man, Alana finds it charming that he texts as quickly as he does, and as much.

_'He will unfortunately have to make do with my company in the meantime. I will strive to keep my ears every bit as pointed and my nose as close.'_

When she calls for everyone to come in for a meal, they are quick to follow, although Buster and Jack look down the road like they can use sheer willpower to make another car in the driveway manifest. They are the most rambunctious and hard-headed of the dogs, but follow eventually when hunger wins out. Once everyone settles, she paces the open living area, always thinking.

Something unusual, she thinks, imagining Hannibal's pointed comment. But nothing jumps out – it's just a little used kitchen, with a small assortment of recently cleaned glassware resting on a hand towel to dry. The sink smells acrid from vomit, but other than the dried remnant of that and some dirt washed into the basin, everything is normal. The air smells of dry sweat and dog food. Will's normalcy at home when she ignores the fresh concrete above his chimney is staggering when she contemplates him seizing on the floor just that morning. Nothing speaks of horror and bad ends. The house should be a bombed-out hovel, not a tidy country home with floral wallpaper and dusty bookshelves.

( _How hard he must struggle to maintain it – this small thread of living like you and others. 'Oh yes,' he'll say, 'I just can't ever find the time to redo the kitchen. You know how it is with work.' An affectation of something everyone can understand. Homeownership. Chores. Getting home in time to let the dogs out. You know theoretically psychopaths affect it similarly, but nowhere near the earnestness that a tin of engine oil next to the battered copy of Moby Dick gives you. Will breathes humanity in violent and muted colors alike._ )

Alana, for all her doubts on how to proceed today, can restore this one small order for Will Graham. She scrubs the kitchen sink to start. The yellow shine of bile and dirt runs down the drain, leaving the steel shining clean, knife-like. She scrubs the counters to follow. The floors and cabinets naturally progress into making the bed, and once her back and knees start to truly feel her tiredness from the day, she finally stops.

Does Will have an executor? Should she plan to keep the dogs? Would she be able to? When is too soon to consider re-homing, and why does that feel like such a betrayal even if Will doesn't come through this? ( _Near your hand, Harley is nudging your arm, hungry for your attention. They are all sad and hungry for your attention._ ) Who would take his fishing gear if they clear the house? If they clear the house and take the dogs from each other, do they destroy all evidence that Will Graham existed? She doesn't even know if anything he owns is from family, or precious in some way. Who makes these decisions? Why does it seem like it might be her?

Alana doesn't cry until all of the dogs are ambling tightly in the back of her Prius with the seats pulled down, ears and lolling tongues filling her rear view mirror. The house is dark behind her, and the road not much better. Her own little cottage is 30 minutes away in Bethesda, and she will delight in having so many small creatures sit with her on the couch tonight and sniff at the mint that is overtaking her hedgerow, but it's hard to imagine the entryway's forest green front door right now and comfort behind it.

She doesn't know if she's angry or sad. The glow of car headlights in the shining reflective eyes of the dogs feels unjustly cold.

( _“I thought you were better than this,” you sobbed, repeating yourself over the phone in the snow, over the anxious heads of the dogs. You felt guilty watching them drift back to the house in the pre-dawn light._ )

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is five o'clock in the morning when Hannibal makes a decision.  
> It would be easiest to kill Will Graham at this point. It would be the kindest way to let him go.  
> He has sat in relative stillness for many hours, pondering if just a touch more than too much of an anticonvulsant would be enough to trigger a cardiac event and end the whole matter simply. Will would never wake up, and never speak of what he's drawn from the air like vapor. The no doubt grisly remnants of Abigail Hobbs' ear found in his autopsy, death freeing him from the implication and shame of her murder and freeing Hannibal from the threat of being seen a little too closely.

The Virginia countryside is alien in the twilight morning hours before dawn. Hannibal is cold, eyes dry and unblinking into the dark. He is at home. He is out of his bounds.

( _Nothing really has ever been able to contain you, not even your own sense of ritual._ )

The work of staging Abigail's death, desecration, and the swelling rush of evidence to Will's doorstep has been the work of many days labor, hundreds of miles traveled, and several hours unslept. He fancies he feels like most creatives do after finishing a piece – tired, but ultimately satisfied, broad brushstrokes of pleasure at a canvas well filled. This one is different this time, performative in a way that he normally doesn't take to. The mise en place of his work is transformed by moving elements, and as one does taking new colors into their palette, Hannibal wonders at how well he has mingled his pigments.

He is parked under a row of American Beech trees, which stand naked, tall, and featureless in the early morning winter cold that bears only the smallest amount of moonlight. It is very near 4 a.m., and nature is doing its work on Will Graham's stomach and mind right now, and he expects the first notes of Act II to rise up at any time. The dosage of emetic is strong enough that it should become uncomfortable enough to wake him up and take a look at what he'll think he's done.

( _Will's anxious eyes always have the glint of a knife – you want to taste the cut of them._ )

Hannibal thinks of the long column of Will Graham's neck, heaving around the esophageal tube, and listens to Dvorak on the stereo. Frederica Von Stade is a clear bell over the speakers, sweetening the wait.

“ _Mesicku, postuj chvili_

_reckni mi, kde je muj mily_

_Rekni mu, stribmy mesicku,_

_me ze jej objima rame,_

_aby si alespon chvilicku_

_vzpomenul ve sneni na mne.”_

The thrill of surprise that fills him when Alana calls him instead of Will is novel. There is no mistaking it - the tidy letters, Alana Bloom, lighting up the simple screen of his phone. Hannibal finds himself in the rare state of being both inconvenienced and delighted, and the swell of _Rusalka_ to the clamor of the ringtone feels bizarre for a moment's time. There is no reason for her to call at this hour, nor would she be so rude to do so unless there was an emergency. Their mutual acquaintance, of course, is ever the emergency. ( _How certain you were that Will would reach for you first. Trade a secret for a secret, and you do so love a good trade. You're almost hurt when you realize this isn't the case, and prod the thought like it were a sore with your tongue, but so too are you excited._ )

Hannibal answers after letting it ring four times.

“Hello?” he says, mustering his most strained, quiet voice. “Alana?”

“Hannibal,” she says, anxiously and almost angry. “Do you know why Will checked out of the hospital? Did they give him any discharge papers to say what made him sick the first time?” Her voice is tinny over the line, but sure.

“Will? We had a session just a few days ago. Jack informed me he left the hospital, and the two of us had a brief conversation about it,” He sighs, shuffles, puts on his best mask of normalcy and concern. “I think the few tests that the staff were able to get in were inconclusive. We danced around the possibility of mental illness, but nothing was medically concluded. Is he alright?”

From the receiver, there's the sound of more anxious voices, someone other than Alana but he can't tell if it's Will. He sits up in his car, and stops the stereo in its entirety. He feels out his own rising discomfort. “Has something happened?”

“I'm truly sorry, I know its' early, but you have to tell me, has he been this bad before?” Alana hisses, voice tight and verging on hysterical. He's not heard it before – the tremor in her tone is uniquely heavy, cloying. “He's having a fucking seizure on the floor, and half of what he says is nonsense. I can't believe they even allowed him to be discharged – the EMTs have no idea what they've walked into, and I don't know what to tell them.”

Hannibal frowns at the swearing, a little tick of the corner of his mouth before he focuses back down on the words. There are people other than Will at the house. Either Alana or Will must have called an emergency service. He runs through his head the steps he took intubating and force feeding Will, feeling confident he has done it correctly and left him largely undisturbed save for a moderate dose of ipecac syrup. He contemplates Will. The younger man was not prone to asking for help, even when the encephalitis was flaring up in the past, even when sick to the point of vomiting in previous encounters. Something had startled him into thinking in terms of efficiency rather than comfort if he had contacted Alana first.

“I must apologize Alana, I didn't see the test results at our last session together, I only allowed the possibility that the illness isn't conventionally physical. His attending physician did recommend that he stay for longer, and prescribed him an antibiotic of some kind, but I'm not sure which. Is he stable? Where are you heading? I need to clear some things off the calendar for today, but I should be there to help,” he adds, quickening his own words into a worried rush. “I feel responsible, I should have pushed Will to return. He wasn't of sound mind making a call like that, no matter his lucidity – I fear have gotten too used to watching instead of instructing in my time in psychiatry.”

She takes a long breath, and sighs from across the way, and Hannibal fancies he feels it like a gust across the back roads near where he is parked, only a few short miles from the farmhouse where this drama unfolds. He can almost feel the shivering of her shoulders – it is exceedingly damp and cold tonight. “Of course I don't hold you wholly responsible, but I'm worried. This isn't just dementia, you have to have seen something.”

“Will was mostly clear if a bit exhausted when last we spoke, and felt confident he was recovering. Jack mentioned Will was disturbed deeply by Georgia Madchen's death, and he was beginning to jump to unusual conclusions. I can only figure he felt driven to pick up the puzzle that her suicide left for him.”

“And you never thought to advise him again against checking out of the hospital after hearing all that? What kind of mental health care is that?” she bites, and the phone signal drops in and out. She is breathing heavily – perhaps walking to her car. It has gotten quieter. “I thought you were better than that,” she says in a rush around another mournful sigh.

Alana has chosen to be angry with him, crying her disappointment in the way that mothers do, like Hannibal isn't her senior by 15 years. How droll. Hannibal is impressed and irked by her forwardness in her assessment of this perceived disaster. If anything, how easily Will has followed the plot up until now has been immensely satisfying, and this may be nothing but a variation of the theme.

Ah, well, many artists are not understood in their own time. However.

However.

Will has chosen to leave him out, and isn't that something new.

When Hannibal considers Will, he considers him like a very fine vein of ore, partially obscured in the tuff and silt of ages layered. There is glints of brilliance just beneath, and while what little he can see shines just as sharply as he would expect, he doesn't know if the next swing of the pick will reveal the lode. For all his machinations, Hannibal still cannot entirely tell if there is yet work to be done on Will. The first whisper of deception or distrust he has felt in Will brings the same anticipation that swinging into that hidden soil does.

Hannibal sighs again, and relishes the rushing cold air that he brings back into his lungs, feeling bright and crisp. His confidence cannot be heard, only seen, and those few short miles are enough for comfort. Alana is none the wiser.

“None of us are infallible, though I regret it has happened with Will, of all the people that have entrusted their health to me,” he says after a pause. “I will be there as soon as I can, though I fear it may be some hours. Please let me know which facility they take him to. Johns Hopkins is a long drive, so I suspect I will be seeing you near D.C. as soon as my clients are settled.”

There are sad platitudes made between the two of them, and Hannibal ends the call.

Enough moonlight remains to carefully drive around the ruts in the road, and the dawn begins its crawl to him. His back aches from sitting for so long, but everything in him sings regardless. What a world to live in that even he can still be surprised.

Frederica Von Stade lifts her voice on the stereo again, as he pushes the volume uncomfortably high.

 

\- - - - -

 

Hannibal finds himself slightly enamored of the image of Will Graham, strapped to his hospital bed as though any moment could bring him back to roaring life. He has the long arms and face of an El Greco – he need only open his eyes and look up mournfully into the lamp above to complete the painting and make St. John the Evangelist in living flesh.

He bookmarks the thought. He has considered how he would display the younger man in several instances, and each is brushed away like sand in a mandala.

After Alana and Jack have left them, Hannibal has raced his thoughts over the problem of Will's rather unanticipated lack of obvious evidence against him. No sad man, crawling out of his delirium, afraid of killing again and again. Plenty of probable cause, but nothing damning without the ensemble currently laid out in the Hobbs residence in Minnesota. Hannibal is not even sure if he has the full measure of Will's awareness during the encounter at the cabin with Abigail, and his flight back to Virginia. It's a conundrum not easily solved with Will unconscious.

He is staring into the sodium lights outside the window, thinking of fish hooks when his awareness is pulled back into the room.  

“Visiting hours are over,” says a nurse.

Hannibal imagines cracking her jaw open like a scallop shell, waiting for the snap.

Instead he sighs and frowns. Makes to look at the Vacheron Constantin at his wrist and does his very best to look contrite. ( _Your uncle was always startled by how easily a lie came to your face. Your aunt just thought it was an elegant face, and hid behind her own fox mask._ ) The small hands of the clock faces march on, as steady as his heartbeat.

“I must apologize for the late hour, but I must ask if the RN can make an exception. The patient is one of my own, and has been in a delicate state prior to this. I'd like for him to wake up to at least one friendly face that can let him know what's happened over the last 12 hours,” he says, and rolls his wrist, feeling the leather there flex. “Separate of that, and as a friend, Will doesn't have any family to stay with him. It's one small thing I can do to make this more comfortable for him.”

The nurse sighs impatiently, and grabs for a clipboard on the wall. The light from the hallway reflects on her greying hairs, and more importantly on her embroidered scrubs, something delicate and pink – _Maggie_ , Hannibal thinks it says. ( _Another thought to file away for perusal later – you are not so tired to think the medical staff will be carrying business cards on the third shift. Coquilles Saint-Jacques is a lovely scallop dish, better served on a cool summer night._ )

“He can stay,” Will rasps softly.

Both Hannibal and the nurse, Maggie, turn sharply at the sound of Will's voice. Will's heavy eyelids droop over glassy eyes, skin wet with fever and sweat.

“Will,” he says, feeling both light-hearted and cautious when he hears his friend ( _project; let's not kid ourselves, yes?_ ) take in a big sigh of air. Will pulls a little at the velcro straps at his arm, weak and annoyed is Hannibal is to judge by the downward twist of his mouth. “You'll have to forgive the hospital staff, Will. You've been having seizures and they didn't want you to damage yourself more.”

The nurse hustles to the bedside, grabbing Will by the wrist to feel the heartbeat beneath. “Mr. Graham, we're happy to see that you're conscious. How's your breathing? Can you take a deep breath for me?”

“-S'tight,” he sighs again. “Feel like I've been boiled to peeling.”

“You've been between fevers since you came in,” she explains, and puts Will's wrist down again, satisfied with whatever she's felt. His arm falls quickly and is caught awkwardly between the velcro and the bed frame. It's sloppy, her conduct. Hannibal, despite knowing on some humorous note that he put Will where he is now, finds himself unaccountably incensed by her conduct. ( _Divide mushroom mixture into scallop shells, spreading mushrooms out to cover bottoms of shells; place about 3 scallops onto each portion. Spoon cream sauce over scallops to coat --_ ) She turns towards the door. “I'm going to call for the current attending to look you over. Shouldn't be more than a few minutes.”

Hannibal nods, happy to be rid of her for the moment. He looks to Will instead, and takes stock.

Will has a hard time swallowing, but is too weak to sit any further up with his arms bound to the bed rails. He is tired and bruised in the dim midnight light of the room, eyes haloed in reds and purples. Perhaps capillary strain from vomiting, or hypertension from the seizures. Compassion stirs Hannibal briefly, gratitude for a day unknown to even him, an oftentimes flawless judge of human behavior, thanks to Will going off script. He will settle the plot back in its place now. Hannibal gathers him by the shoulder and pulls him back towards the headboard to ease his breathing.

Will's arms stiffen tightly, rigid as birch sticks and shuddering for the moment. Hannibal pauses, certain that another seizure is beginning, and annoyed that the nurse is gone so quickly, but he is also pleased. He wants to see this one up close – last time he was interrupted too soon.

When he looks down, Will's eyes track across his face many times, reading incessantly for something. His teeth click when he grimaces, like a headache is coming on. What he doesn't expect is to see some sort of growing understanding in Will's eyes, tumultuously cloudy and green like sea water.

“Your...first time killing a man wasn't Tobias Budge. You didn't consider it murder then either, though instead of blunt force you used a sword.”

Everything is still.

Instinct and intellect war with each other, swelling like a string section. Hannibal very nearly grabs Will by his sweat-shiny face and drives his thumbs into his sea-bream eyes for seeing too far. Like most predators, he will ease his claws out before he will bear his neck. His heart is beating, excited, while his hands move to Will's hands.

Hannibal traces his own gaze to Will Graham. Will Graham, Will Graham, what to do with bright and zephyrous Will Graham. It's not possible for him to be aware of Paul Mormund and his youth in Paris. He cannot truly know this moment in time, even as it marked another threshold for Hannibal to cross. A moment that for all Will Graham is an empath and a modern day marvel of deductive skill, he cannot actually know in that sort of detail. It almost infuriates him when he realizes he doesn't understand how this could be. Hannibal pauses, twisting the skin beneath his hand until he knows that small crescents are digging in to settle next to Will's own self-inflicted wounds. He can feel them pulsing to bloom. Will flinches weakly under his attentions.

Will's eyes are glossy, still tracking back and forth across Hannibal's face. He smiles, a wry thing, mean at the corners of his mouth. He can feel the arrogance of it. “At worst in your opinion, a crime of passion, right?” he drawls, and rolls his eyes back into his head, slumping suddenly.

( _“They will call it murder,” she says_. _Murasaki looks between you and the armor – between you and the head of the butcher you had slain. “At worst a crime of passion,” says you, jaunty with youth. Those are your words. You were as proud as a cat with a bird. You are as certain of the memory as you are of Mischa's little milk teeth at the bottom of the soup bowl, as certain as Paul Mormund's skull sitting decoratively on a tray like a sow's head._ )

It is quiet, save for the slow sounds of the pulse oximeter's monitoring screen. Somewhere down the hall, voices. Will is still with unrestful sleep, as though he had never even been awake.

For a moment, Hannibal dares not move, but carefully catalogues each detail of this moment, and feels out the edges of his own awareness. Will has exhumed a memory that even Hannibal does not often consider anymore. There are no instances that they would have discussed it. Hannibal does not think anyone in the United States even knows about his relation to Murasaki, not even Bedelia. He does not write of it, he does not speak her name.

Will knows something that is impossible to know.

And oh, now that's an exciting notion.

“I'm afraid he's fallen back asleep,” he commiserates to the nurse and night-shift doctor when they come back. They fuss with Will's fluid catheter, and listen to his breathing with the stethoscope. Notes are taken on his chart. Platitudes driven between the staff and him and a promise for Hannibal to call them as soon as he sees any signs of consciousness again. There is no mention of visiting hours. He has grown talented at hiding smiles behind frowns. Will surprises him again, and it tastes as fresh as newly baked bread.

 

\- - - - -

 

It is five o'clock in the morning when Hannibal makes a decision.

It would be easiest to kill Will Graham at this point. It would be the kindest way to let him go.

He has sat in relative stillness for many hours, pondering if just a touch more than too much of an anticonvulsant would be enough to trigger a cardiac event and end the whole matter simply. Will would never wake up, and never speak of what he's drawn from the air like vapor. The no doubt grisly remnants of Abigail Hobbs' ear found in his autopsy, death freeing him from the implication and shame of her murder and freeing Hannibal from the threat of being seen a little too closely.

He has carried Diazepam and Midazolam since he first identified Will's illness – as a psychiatrist, it wasn't terribly difficult to obtain, though it was unfortunate that the toxicology report had picked up the high levels of bezodiazepines. He has used them industriously in the passing weeks to move Will from his fugue states into a more suggestible attitude. Using them now carries the risk of others knowing Will couldn't have administered it himself. No matter though; it would likely be chalked up to the overzealousness of the young ambulance staff. Hannibal and Abigail can grieve him quietly from Prague or Marrakesh or anywhere that takes their fancy, as soon as it would be appropriate for him to extricate himself from the mystery of Will Graham and the fumblings of the FBI.

From the bed, Will is still, save for the rapid twitches of his eyelids. They delicately contract, spider veined with red from his blood vessels and his burning eyes. Hannibal wants to carve them from his face and eat them like a slice of yellowtail on hot coals. ( _The eyes beneath, well those you want to keep like jewels in a box. They saw something you don't understand, and_ _ **that**_ _is rare treasure in an otherwise banal world._ )

He cannot abide not knowing how Will knows about Paul Mormund, or his uncanny deviance from the net Hannibal has carefully woven around his mental state and the disappearance of Abigail Hobbs. For the first time, Hannibal Lecter thinks that not only can good Will see the face of the Chesapeake Ripper, but maybe something further still, and isn't that something remarkable.

Will's hand feels very small and cold in his broader palm, criss-crossed with bloody stars drawn with his fingernails. He wants to taste them, the bitterness of stress and fear worked into them. With a sigh, Hannibal reaches an inevitable conclusion. He leans back in the plastic chair of the ICU room, and strolls down the bright halls of his mind, orchestrating a new stage as he goes. There are places to scour clean, and windows to open to new dazzling lights. 

 


End file.
